Get to know the history behind 'Retrograde'

As the riveting drama about Sidney Poitier hits the West End, learn all about this trailblazing actor and the shocking events of the play.

Hollywood is coming to the West End this spring as Ryan Calais Cameron’s riveting thriller Retrograde transfers to the Apollo Theatre. The play centres on the trailblazing African-American film actor Sidney Poitier as he reaches an important crossroads in his career, and has to balance his professional ambitions with his commitment to social activism.

Calais Cameron is also a trailblazer, having had an enormous success in the West End with his play For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy. Retrograde previously had an acclaimed run at London’s Kiln Theatre and is directed by its new artistic director Amit Sharma, with Ivanno Jeremiah reprising his role as Poitier, alongside Stanley Townsend and Oliver Johnstone.

Ahead of your trip to this fascinating dramatisation of a piece of little-known Hollywood Golden Era history, get to know all about the real Sidney Poitier and why he remains such an enduring and inspiring figure.

Book Retrograde tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

What is Retrograde about?

Retrograde is set in the 1950s. It’s a gripping real-time 90-minute play which sees a young Sidney Poitier excited about a big potential career break: the offer to play the lead role in a big network TV movie. He visits the network’s lawyer, Mr Parks, to sign his contract, but instead finds himself being interrogated about his affiliation with civil rights figures such as Martin Luther King.

The terrible dilemma for Poitier is that the network is demanding he publicly denounce Paul Robeson, a popular Black entertainer and political activist, otherwise he faces being blacklisted in Hollywood (it’s the time of the “Red Scare” communist witch hunt).

Poitier also spars with screenwriter Bobby, who created the show and proudly championed the casting of Poitier in it. But is he truly on his side? This situation tests all three men, and presents the audience with compelling and still hugely resonant questions around politics, culture, race, allyship, and the sacrifices involved in standing up for our beliefs.

Who was Sidney Poitier?

Poitier was an immensely talented American actor whose family came from the Bahamas. Young Sidney was actually born during a trip to Miami, Florida, but he spent his childhood in the Caribbean. Aged 16 he moved to New York to pursue his dreams of becoming an actor.

Poitier made his Broadway debut in 1947 in Lysistrata, and in that year also co-founded the Committee for the Negro in the Arts (CNA) – his performing and his passionate social activism going hand in hand. He became a highly respected stage actor, later starring in shows such as the original production of A Raisin in the Sun.

His film career soon took off as well, thanks to a role in Darryl F Zanuck’s 1950 movie No Way Out. Poitier picked up his first Oscar nomination for 1958 film The Defiant and then, in 1963, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for drama Lilies of the Field – making history as the first Black actor ever to win the award.

Plenty more hits followed, including the enduring movie favourites To Sir, with Love, In the Heat of the Night, and Guess Who’s Going to Dinner. In 2002 Poitier won the Honorary Academy Award for his contribution to cinema – the same year in which Denzel Washington won his Oscar for Training Day. Washington shouted out Poitier in his speech, saying: “I’ll always be following in your footsteps.”

Among many other plaudits, Poitier received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, and was made an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II. Countless artists, creatives and activists have spoken of their immense respect and admiration for this pioneering figure – both in Hollywood and far beyond.

Calais Cameron, the writer of Retrograde, has said: “Sidney Poitier’s journey – his courage, conviction, and the weight of the choices he faced – is not just his story; it’s a reflection of the challenges and dilemmas many of us still navigate today.”

What are some of Sidney Poitier’s most famous movies?

1951: Cry, the Beloved Country Poitier plays a young minister in South Africa, who aids a visiting minister confronted with the horrors of the apartheid.

1955: Blackboard Jungle Poitier’s breakout role was as a rebellious but extremely talented student in this movie set in an inner-city school.

1958: The Defiant Ones Poitier co-starred with Tony Curtis as two escaped prisoners who are shackled together, and must work together if they’re going to survive.

1961: A Raisin in the Sun Poitier reprised his acclaimed lead role in the film adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry’s extraordinary play about a Black family dreaming of a better life.

1963: Lilies of the Field Poitier won his landmark Oscar for playing a stubborn itinerant worker whose life is changed by a group of East German nuns.

1967: To Sir, with Love Perhaps Poitier’s most beloved role is as an inspirational teacher who gradually wins over the troubled kids in a school in the East End of London.

1967: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Poitier played the surprise fiancé of a white woman in this groundbreaking movie, which also starred Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as the woman’s parents.

Is Retrograde a true story?

Calais Cameron’s play is definitely inspired by real events. During the terrifying time in mid-century America when Senator McCarthy – and his House Un-American Activities Committee – used the fear of communism to hound “undesirables” out of work, Poitier did indeed come under scrutiny due to his affiliation with organisations like the CNA, and his participation in events such as a Negro History Festival put on by Harlem newspaper Freedom.

There was deep suspicion about Poitier’s friendship with passionately outspoken Black performers such as Paul Robeson – which we hear about in the play. It’s also true, as Calais Cameron infers, that Poitier was spied on by the FBI, told to denounce his friends as dangerous communists, and pressured to sign a loyalty oath.

It was as he signed on for his breakthrough role, in movie Blackboard Jungle, that he was first presented with that oath by nervous studio lawyers. The issue came up again when he was preparing for a lead part in the primetime TV drama A Man is Ten Feet Tall, this time by lawyers for the network NBC. They demanded he also denounce Robeson.

This was a pivotal moment for Poitier. To refuse might doom his career, or, if HUAC went after him, even lead to a prison sentence. But what would it mean if he caved? He was already part of the burgeoning civil rights movement: he had met with Martin Luther King. The nail-biting Retrograde lets us see Poitier making his choice in real time – a moment that echoes through history.

Book Retrograde tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Retrograde (Marc Brenner)